Tuesday, 18 September 2012

Naked and Dramatic (+Tutorial!)

I love this look: this eye forms the basis of my 'everyday' wear but yesterday I ramped things up with an amazing Illamasqua Intense Lipgloss in Temper. I've always struggled with this one - it's very sticky and almost -too- pigmented! But yesterday I thought I might be applying too much so used about half of what I would usually and applied with a lipbrush. It's not very long-wearing but my God it's pretty. It has an almost stain-like effect when applied like this and is definitely a better choice now.

This is a basic brown smokey eye using neutrals from the Urban Decay Naked Palette. This, like all of my Urban Decay Palettes, gets used SO much. It took a while to learn to love it because I am so not a neutrals girl; however, it's brilliant for smokey eyes and the softer and pale shades are brilliant for blending.

This is how you create my standard brown smokey eye - really easy and can be daytime or evening depending on how dramatic your make up usually is.

1) Apply Urban Decay Eye Primer Potion all over the lid and up to the brow
2) Using any brush you like - I prefer a small domed fluff brush (like the MAC 239) - apply Urban Decay Smog all over the lid up to the crease, using a reasonable amount of product and buffing it in, which I find makes the colour truer and longer-lasting.
3) Using a fluffy crease brush (I'm using Sephora's Rounded Crease Brush to excellent effect in pretty much every eye look) to apply Darkhorse through the crease, and winging it up toward the brow.
4) Using that same brush, blend any harsh lines into each other.
5) Take a clean brush and apply brow highlight. For a shimmery brow highlight, I like Virgin and Sin mixed together, whilst Virgin alone is more of a satiny sheen shade.